Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1887-11-24

Il euCsA Au1t - u Nlucl paICub MuO QuCuCuE1
any Of the light in ehild's soul Instead OF
arresting The sportfulness. 20 forth
and help him trundle the hoop, and
| fly the kite, and build the snow castla
Those shoulders are too little 70
carry burden, that brow is too young to
be wrinkled. those feet are too sprightiy to
go along at funeral pace. God bless their
be sportful. Let them romp and sing and
a harrah. In this 'I way thsy SS" gather ase@
up a surplus of energy for future
lifa For the child that walks around with
q scowl, dragging his feet as though they
were weights and sitting down by the hour
In moping and grumbling, prophecy life
Of utter inanition and discomfort. Sooner
hush the robbins in the air till they are silent
As o bat, and lecture the frisking lambs on
the hillside until they walk like old sheen,
rather than put exhilarant childhood in the
stocks.
The fifth error in the training Of childhood
Is the poStponement Of its moral culture until
too late Multitudes Of children, because Of
their precocity, have been urged into depths
OF study where they ought not to 60, and
their intellects have been overburdened and
overstrained and battered to pieces against
Latin grammars and algebras, and coming
forth into practical life they will hardly riss
to mediocrity, and there is now a stuffing
and examining system of education in the
schools OF our country that is deathful to
the teachers who have to enforce it, and de-
structive to the children who must submit to
the process. You find children at nine and
ten years of age with school lessons
only appropriate for children Of fifteen.
Ii children are kept in school,
and studying from nine to three
o'clock, no home study except music ought to
be required of them. Six hours of study is
o.. - y
ought to be devoted to recreation and pure
fun. But you cannot begin too early the
moral culture of child or on too COM
plete a scale. You can look back
upon your own life and remember
what mighty impressions were made
upon you at five or six years of age. Oh,
that child does not sit so silent during your
conversation not to be influenced by it. You
say he does not understand. Although much of
your phraseology is beyond his grasp, he is
gathering up from your talk influences which
will effect his immortal destiny. From
the question he asks you long afterward
you find he understood all about what
you were saying. You think the child does
not appreciate that beautiful cloud, but its
most delicate lines are reflected into the very
depths OF the youthful nature, and score of
years from now you will see the shadow of
that cloud in the tastes and refnements de-
yeloped. The song with which you sing
that child to sleep will echo through all
its life, and ring back from the very
arches OF heaven. think that often the first
seven years Of a child's life decides whether it
sbail be lrascible, waspish, rude, false, hypo-
crlClcai, or GENTLE truthful, frank, obedient,
honest and Christian. The present generation
OF men will pass off very much as they
are now. Although the Gospel is offered
them, the general rule is that drunk.
ards die drunkards, thieves die thieves,
ibertines die hbertines. Therefore to the
youth we turn. You fill the bushel measure
with good corn, and there will be no room for
husks: Glorious Alfred Cookman was con-
verted at ten years Of age. At Car
Isle, Pennsylvania, during the progress
Of religious meeting In the Methodist
Church, while many were keeling at the foot
of the altar, this boy knelt in a corner of the
church all by himself aud said: "Precious
Saviour, thou art saving others, o, wilt thou
not save me?" A Presbyterian elder melt
beside him and led him into the light. En-
throned Alfred Cookmanl Tell me from the
skies, were you converted too ear1ya But
I cannot hear his answer. 1t is
overpowered by the hosannahs Of
the tens of thousands who were brought to
God through his ministry. Isaac Watts, the
great Christian poet, was converted at nine
years Of age. Robert Hall, the great Baptist
evangelist, was converted at twelve years Of
age. Jonathan Edwards the greatest of
American logicians, was converted at seven
years of age
Oh for one generation of holy men and
women. Shall it be the next9 Fathers and
mothers, you, under God, are to decide
whether from your families shall go forth
towards, inebriates. counterfeiters, bias
phemers, and whether there shall be those
bearing your image and carrying your
name fostering in the low haunts Of vice,
and houndering in dissipation, and making
the midnight Of their lives horrid
with long howl Of ruin; or whether
from your family altars shall come the
Christians, the reformers, the teachers, the
ministers of Christ, the comforters of the
troubled, the healers of the sick, the enacters
Of good laws, the founders Of charitable in
stitutions. and great many who shall in the
humber sphere of toll and usefulness serve
God and the best interests of the human race.
You cannot as parents shirk the RESPONSE
bility. God has charged you with mission,
and all the thrones OF heaven are waiting to
see whether you will do your duty. We
| must not forget that it is not so much what
we teach our children as what we are in their
presence. We wish them to be better than
we are, but the probability is that they
will only be reproductions of our
own character. German literature has
much to say of the spectre of
Brocken.n Among those mountains travellers
| themselves copied on gigantic scale in the
| clouds, At first the travellers do not realize
that it is themselves on larger scale. When
| they lift hand or move the head this mon
ster spectre does the same, and with such en-
largement Of proportions that the scene Ia
most exciting, and thousands have gone to
! that place just to behold the spectre
| of Brocken. The probability is that some OF
our faults, which we consider small and in
significant, if we do not put an end to them
| will be copied on larger scale in the lives OF
| our children, and perhaps dilated and exag-
| gerated into spectral proportions. You need
not go as far off as the Broken to see that
/ process. The first thing in Importance in the
education Of our children isto make ourselves,
| by the grace Of God, fit examples to be
copied. The day will come when you must
confront that child, not in the church pew ON
calm Sabbath, hut amid the CONSERVATION
of the rising dead, and the flying heavens,
| and burning world From your side that
son or daughter, bone of your bone, heart
of your heart, the fathers brow his
brow, the mothers eye his eye, shall
go forth to an eternal destiny. What
will be your Joy If at last you hear their
feet in the same golden highway and hear
4 their voices in the same rapturcus song, IL.
lustrations, while the eternal ages last, OF
what faithful parent could, under God, ac-
complish. / was reading Of q mother who,
dying, had all her children about her, and
took each one OF them by the hand, and asked
them to meet her in heaven, and with
tears and sobs such as those only know
who have stood by the deathbed Of
good old mother, they all promised.
But there was young man Of nineteen who
had been very wild and reckless, and hard,
and proud, and when she took his hand she